Blackest Ever Black marked its fifth anniversary in 2015 with events at the ICA in London and Berghain in Berlin. The former featured an unforgettable performance from Mick Hobbs's Officer!, the shape-shifting group's first performance in twenty-odd years. For this show Hobbs - surely the UK DIY underground's greatest living songwriter - was joined by longtime collaborators Mary Currie of Flaming Tunes (voice, shruti, theremin, glock) and Joey Stack (keyboards, voice), with Tilly Bean on bass, Ed Bernez on drums and Lydia Fischer contributing flute, trumpet and baritone horn. The set list comprised songs from Dead Unique (BLACKEST 006CD/LP), the "lost" 1995 album by Officer! which Blackest Ever Black released in 2014, a smattering of earlier classics from the '70s-'80s (including "Life At The Water's Edge" and "Dogface") and heart-rending covers of "Beguiling The Hours" and "The Best Weapon" from Mary Currie and the late Gareth Williams's peerless Flaming Tunes album. The show was recorded, and has been beautifully mixed for release by Deerhoof's John Dieterich. A co-release from Blackest Ever Black and Hobbs's own Life & Living Records. Printed insert artwork by Li Williams; Edition of 300.

Gunshots At Crestridge is the second full-length album from Philadelphia's Jesse Dewlow, recording under the moniker People Skills. The follow-up to 2014's Siltbreeze set, Tricephalic Head. Ten sunken songs, derisively adorned with rhythm and rudimentary dub effects. Bedroom elegies for the lost and irretrievable, last-ditch spells for transformation and renewal. Thurston Moore and Byron Coley likened the previous record to "South Island New Zealand pop played inside of an armored car," and that description holds here: underneath the hoods of these wracked and weather-beaten recordings are melodies of disarming beauty and optimism, bordering on the (willfully) mawkish, bubblegum ground underfoot. Whether speaking through stately keyboard pastorals ("Mint Julep"), rat-arsed rock 'n roll slur ("89¢ Public Render") or sulphurous aggro-electronics (the two-part title track), Gunshots At Crestridge exposes, then seeks to redeem, all of our tiny acts of self-sabotage, all of our sins against time.

Ashtray Navigations's To Make A Fool picks up where the nerve-damaged exotica of 2015's A Shimmering Replica left off - acerbic "surf" guitar and synthetic salt-breeze fit for the Tropic of Yorkshire. Instant immersion in a potent, pungent psychedelia that feels equal parts cosmic and aquatic. What Phil Todd wrenches out of his instrument these days is a language unto itself - a helical, grieving howl, a (super)natural efflorescence, beyond earthly description - ur-rock and post-everything. Equal emphasis is given here to pulsating machine rhythms and lush keyboard textures, with contributions by Mel O'Dubhshlaine. There were pre-echoes of all this in the recent Fluctuants (2015) and Aero Infinite (2014), but To Make A Fool feels like the fullest expression of something which was only glimpsed in those earlier works. The side-long "Spray Two" - gently eddying string-pads gradually slashed with fraught piano improvisations - is a masterpiece in its own right. At its delirious peak, the whole thing boils over into brooding, arpeggiated noir-techno - Michael Mann's steadicam roaming Leeds's B-roads, some kind of tangerine nightmare - before finally cooling into a bleary starfield of pure and sumptuous hypno-tone. This is a trip, in the most skull-splitting, soul-crinkling sense of the word, but it soothes and heals as well. A circular and transformative journey to the other side of the underneath, and a landmark recording from one of the most adept and visionary nodes in Britain's freak-out underground.

Carla dal Forno presents her debut solo album You Know What It's Like, following time in cult Melbourne group Mole House and an earlier association with Blackest Ever Black as a member of F ingers and Tarcar. Her voice is an extraordinary instrument: both disarmingly conversational and glacially detached. It has something of the bedsit urbanity of Anna Domino, Marine Girls, Antena, or Helen Johnstone - stoned and deadpan - but it can also summon a gothic intensity that Nico or Kendra Smith would approve of. This voice is the perfect embodiment of dal Forno's emotionally ambiguous songs: their lyrics rooted in the everyday, observing and exposing a series of uncomfortable truths. "Fast Moving Cars" and "What You Gonna Do Now?" weigh up claustrophobia against loneliness, inertia against acceleration, doubling-down versus taking-off; the title track acknowledges the provisional nature of love and "real" intimacy, then decides to brave it anyway. By the time the startlingly sparse "The Same Reply" arrives, the sense of dejection is absolute. The vocal-led pieces are interspersed with richly evocative instrumentals. Smothered in tape-hiss and reverb, the seasick synthesizer miniatures "Italian Cinema" and "Dragon Breath" channel the twilit DIY whimsy of Flaming Tunes and Call Back The Giants. The drum machine and bassline of "DB Rip" are pure Chicago house, but then its dark choral drones nod to Dalis Car's dreams of blood-spattered Cornwall stone. "Dry The Rain" drinks from a stream of moon-musick that runs through Coil, In Gowan Ring, Third Ear Band, even the Raincoats's Odyshape (1981).

LP version. Carla dal Forno presents her debut solo album You Know What It's Like, following time in cult Melbourne group Mole House and an earlier association with Blackest Ever Black as a member of F ingers and Tarcar. Her voice is an extraordinary instrument: both disarmingly conversational and glacially detached. It has something of the bedsit urbanity of Anna Domino, Marine Girls, Antena, or Helen Johnstone - stoned and deadpan - but it can also summon a gothic intensity that Nico or Kendra Smith would approve of. This voice is the perfect embodiment of dal Forno's emotionally ambiguous songs: their lyrics rooted in the everyday, observing and exposing a series of uncomfortable truths. "Fast Moving Cars" and "What You Gonna Do Now?" weigh up claustrophobia against loneliness, inertia against acceleration, doubling-down versus taking-off; the title track acknowledges the provisional nature of love and "real" intimacy, then decides to brave it anyway. By the time the startlingly sparse "The Same Reply" arrives, the sense of dejection is absolute. The vocal-led pieces are interspersed with richly evocative instrumentals. Smothered in tape-hiss and reverb, the seasick synthesizer miniatures "Italian Cinema" and "Dragon Breath" channel the twilit DIY whimsy of Flaming Tunes and Call Back The Giants. The drum machine and bassline of "DB Rip" are pure Chicago house, but then its dark choral drones nod to Dalis Car's dreams of blood-spattered Cornwall stone. "Dry The Rain" drinks from a stream of moon-musick that runs through Coil, In Gowan Ring, Third Ear Band, even the Raincoats's Odyshape (1981).

Includes MP3/FLAC download code. Wreck His Days is dubbed-out cosmic pastorals and politically exasperated techno-exotica from Blackest Ever Black's most secretive and shape-shifting project, Tomorrow The Rain Will Fall Upwards. Guest contributors include Conrad and Jonnine Standish of HTRK, Genevieve McGuckin (These Immortal Souls), and Lucas Santanna. The ghosts of Les Baxter, Rowland S. Howard and Nina Simone are also in attendance. But whoever is pulling the strings remains hidden. Structurally Wreck His Days recalls the grand collective statements of This Mortal Coil or Massive Attack, but musically its dreamlike overtures have more in common with Deux Filles, Global Communication, Arthur Russell or Penguin Cafe Orchestra. It roams far and wide: from near-Balearic piano loops of the title track, to the Audrey Horne-worthy death-jazz of "Ghost From The Coast" and the hulking, bass-heavy soundsystem weapon "Reverberasia". The swelling, uplifting astral psychedelia of "...And I Tried So Hard", while "I Beat As I Sleep As I Dream" reprises the bleak existential synth drift of T.T.R.W.F.U.'s extraordinary 2014 10", How Great A Fame Has Departed. A deep-seated socialist impulse drives the whole thing.

LP version. Blackest Ever Black presents Af Ursin's 2005 masterpiece Aura Legato. Af Ursin is the alter ego of Finnish autodidact composer/improviser Timo van Luijk. His work is rooted in the use of acoustic instruments (wind, percussion, strings), but his special sensitivity to the timbral qualities of each instrument, and his deft blurring of them, results in a sound-world that is mysterious, amorphous and hallucinatory, full of suggestive shadows, creaks and whispers. Van Luijk's process begins always with pure improvisation: music played in an intuitive, sensual way, without the employment of conscious technique. He performs and overdubs each instrumental component himself, and out of this process micro-structures and loose arrangements emerge: the piece becomes an improvised composition. Aura Legato is one of van Luijk's darker and more acutely psychedelic offerings: a work of profound interiority, but one that also conjures images of old Europe and fin-de-siècle decadence - dabblings in Thelema, the fog of the opium-den - and has earned comparisons to Third Ear Band, Nurse With Wound, Mirror and HNAS.

Raime presents their second album, Tooth. The widescreen melancholia of their 2012 debut, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, gives way to an urgent and focused futurism, in the shape of eight fiercely up-tempo, minimal, meticulously crafted electro-acoustic rhythm tracks. The DNA of dub-techno, garage/grime and post-hardcore rock music spliced into sleek and predatory new forms. No let-up, no hesitation. Needlepoint guitar, deftly junglist drum programming, brooding synths and lethal sub-bass drive the engine. The production is immaculate, high definition. No hiss, no obscuring drones or extraneous noise: the music of Tooth is wide-open and exposed. The seeds of its supple dancehall biomechanics can be found in the self-titled 2013 EP by Raime side-project Moin, an ahead-of-its-time synthesis of art-rock and sound-system sensibilities, but Tooth pushes the template further, binding the disparate elements together so tightly that they become indistinguishable from one another. If Quarter Turns was an album that confronted total loss and self-destruction, even longed for it, then Tooth is the sound of resistance and counter-attack: cunning, quick, resolute; calling upon stealth as much as brute-force. At a time when so many pay lip service to experimentation without ever fully committing themselves or their work to it, Raime return from three years of deep, dedicated studio research with a bold and original new music: staunch, rude, and way out in front.

Double LP version. Raime presents their second album, Tooth. The widescreen melancholia of their 2012 debut, Quarter Turns Over A Living Line, gives way to an urgent and focused futurism, in the shape of eight fiercely up-tempo, minimal, meticulously crafted electro-acoustic rhythm tracks. The DNA of dub-techno, garage/grime and post-hardcore rock music spliced into sleek and predatory new forms. No let-up, no hesitation. Needlepoint guitar, deftly junglist drum programming, brooding synths and lethal sub-bass drive the engine. The production is immaculate, high definition. No hiss, no obscuring drones or extraneous noise: the music of Tooth is wide-open and exposed. The seeds of its supple dancehall biomechanics can be found in the self-titled 2013 EP by Raime side-project Moin, an ahead-of-its-time synthesis of art-rock and sound-system sensibilities, but Tooth pushes the template further, binding the disparate elements together so tightly that they become indistinguishable from one another. If Quarter Turns was an album that confronted total loss and self-destruction, even longed for it, then Tooth is the sound of resistance and counter-attack: cunning, quick, resolute; calling upon stealth as much as brute-force. At a time when so many pay lip service to experimentation without ever fully committing themselves or their work to it, Raime return from three years of deep, dedicated studio research with a bold and original new music: staunch, rude, and way out in front.

Blackest Ever Black presents the first CD edition of Af Ursin's 2005 masterpiece Aura Legato. Af Ursin is the alter ego of Finnish autodidact composer/improviser Timo van Luijk. His work is rooted in the use of acoustic instruments (wind, percussion, strings), but his special sensitivity to the timbral qualities of each instrument, and his deft blurring of them, results in a sound-world that is mysterious, amorphous and hallucinatory, full of suggestive shadows, creaks and whispers. Van Luijk's process begins always with pure improvisation: music played in an intuitive, sensual way, without the employment of conscious technique. He performs and overdubs each instrumental component himself, and out of this process micro-structures and loose arrangements emerge: the piece becomes an improvised composition. Aura Legato is one of van Luijk's darker and more acutely psychedelic offerings: a work of profound interiority, but one that also conjures images of old Europe and fin-de-siècle decadence - dabblings in Thelema, the fog of the opium-den - and has earned comparisons to Third Ear Band, Nurse With Wound, Mirror and HNAS.

Limted repress! First ever vinyl reissue of Caroline K's outstanding 1985 album, Now Wait For Last Year. This haunting, wistful work of post-industrial synthesizer music - the late Nocturnal Emissions co-founder's only solo record - has accrued a fervent cult following over the past 30 years, and copies of the original pressing are today extremely sought-after. Tags like industrial, minimal synth or proto-techno can't really do justice to the richly cinematic sound-world that Caroline Kaye Walters, aka Caroline K, describes as "from the sustained ambient tension of sidelong opener 'The Happening World' to the future-primitive rhythms and stately piano flourishes of 'Animal Lattice', and the melancholic, deep-frozen synth sequences of 'Chearth'." Fans of Wendy Carlos's A Clockwork Orange, Chris Carter's The Space Between, and early Detroit techno should pay special attention, but this searching, future-proof masterpiece demands to be heard by all.

Fast Moving Cars is the debut solo single from Carla dal Forno (F ingers, Tarcar). Poignant, alluring, happy/sad art-pop. . . . Both a song of devotion and a dream of leaving. Languid, dub-wise, but with a heartbreaking clarity and economy of expression. The arrangement is stark, if not austere: rooted bassline, dry snare, noirish synth-drift and whispers of reverb conspire to open space rather than fill it. It's perfect for Carla's voice, a floating understated alto. "Don't be so daft, do something exciting. . . ." The lyrics are frank; fluent in the feelings that underpin the beginning, middle and end of a relationship.

Includes MP3/FLAC download. House Number 44 is the first volume of The Composite Moods Collection, a cycle of Dalhous recordings that examines the relationship between two individuals cohabiting in a confined space -- their interactions, their sense of self and of each other, and the pregnant space between. One of these people, perhaps the protagonist of House Number 44, is (or at least feels) in fine mental health. The other appears distinctly unwell -- detached, isolated, often feeling helpless and unable to influence the world; at other times prone to committing acts of extraordinary aggression and manipulation. The title of The Composite Moods Collection nods to the world of film and library cues, riffing on the utilitarian idea of music "to suit the mood" and the appealing if archaic notion that a "mood" can be a discrete or fixed thing, a unit of feeling. Dalhous's Marc Dall takes this notion and runs with it, attempting to convey a bipolarity of mood, with each movement contradicting or erasing what came before. And so, while a finely crafted and very deliberate narrative connects each cue to the next, it is not a smooth or a linear path. On the contrary it is jarring, complex, subject to severe and sudden modulations. Though Dalhous's R. D. Laing trilogy -- An Ambassador For Laing (BLACKEST 003CD/LP, 2013), Visibility Is A Trap (BLACKEST 029EP, 2014), and Will To Be Well (BLACKEST 007CD/LP, 2014) -- is now complete, Laing remains a spectral presence in their work, and The Composite Moods Collection ultimately cleaves closely to recurring Dalhous themes of identity, behavioral modification, and self-help. Longtime followers of Dalhous will observe that House Number 44 contains some of their sparsest, most malevolent-sounding work to date (see especially the brooding synthesizer throb of "Response To Stimuli" and "End Of Each Analysis") but some of their most disarmingly beautiful too, with indelible melodies and atmospheres as deep as thought, including "Methods of Élan," "On A Level," and the elegiac "Lines To Border." Dall's enduring affection for neo-noir film scores of the '80s and early '90s, with their gleaming electronics and submerged existential torment, is more palpable here than ever, and you may also hear echoes of Klaus Schulze, Pete Namlook, or Eno's The Shutov Assembly -- but Dalhous continue to plot their own course, obsessively and meticulously, oblivious to contemporary trends and unconstrained by historical influence; driven, indeed, by their own demons.

Memory Care Unit is a long-form offering of poignant, isolationist machine music from Secret Boyfriend. Eschewing the cryptic and compact song-sketches that characterized his 2013 LP This Is Always Where You've Lived (BLACKEST 023LP), Ryan Martin instead guides listeners through vast interior topographies and nerve-damaged ambiences that comfort and deceive like memory itself. Beginning with "The Singing Bile" -- minimal synth submerged and subjected to an almost oceanic pressure -- the tracks are mostly crude, extended live improvisations, recorded straight to tape. Martin's loose intention was to subtract himself from proceedings and "let the music play itself," but the erasure is not quite complete; on the contrary, each piece feels distinctly authored, and charged with personal significance. The atrophying loops of "Memorize Them Well" broach the elegiac grandeur of Gas and William Basinski, while "Paean delle Palme" summons E.A.R., Af Ursin, and the clammy, opioid exoticism of :zoviet*france:*'s Just an Illusion. The album is largely instrumental, but there are two weighty exceptions: the sprawling, drumbox-driven space blues of "Little Jammy Centre" and the guileless yearning of "Stripping At The Nail." This is electronic pop undressed, unraveled, and mapped onto the infinite wave. Expansive and enveloping, Memory Care Unit's offering of comfort and refuge is difficult to resist. But this amniotic idyll is frayed and haunted at its edges, and ultimately treacherous. The return to innocence it promises may be possible, but the price is separation, alienation, and loss. Housed in full-color reverse-board sleeve with printed inner sleeve. Includes MP3/FLAC download code.

Bremen return with Eclipsed, a double LP of glacial electronics, strung-out drone-punk, and smoldering space-rock minimalism. Following the release of their self-titled debut on Skrammel in 2013, the Swedish duo of Jonas Tiljander (Brainbombs) and Lanchy Orre (Brainbombs, Totalitär) joined the Blackest Ever Black fold in 2014 with Second Launch (BLACKEST 033LP). If the mood of that record was brooding and stygian, its monochord intensity unfaltering, then Eclipsed, this equally sprawling set, could be construed as a warmer, more dynamic, and variegated offering. Perhaps. There are still passages that are heavier than a death in the family. Still a staunch obsession with the consciousness-altering power of repetition. The band's points of departure are specific: a particular organ sound from J. A. Seazer's 1970s recordings, the squalid alien guitar tone of Chrome, the cranked psychic roar-out riffage of Hawkwind, the melancholic mode of Swedish jazz pianist Jan Johansson, minimalism from La Monte Young to Eleh, "cold '80s electronic sound," and sloppy, lo-fi psychedelic rock from the likes of Pärson Sound and Träd, Gräs och Stenar. Tiljander's icily poised synth and organ drones and the grieving cosmic howl of Orre's guitar dominate the landscape, but their instrumental palette has also expanded to include various percussion treatments, saxophone, strings, and dissolved vocal fragments. Their exploratory jamming, overdubbing, and dub-savvy mixing yields a music of unbelievable eloquence and physicality. Eclipsed is another masterpiece of black hole psychedelia from one of the greatest underground rock 'n' roll units on the planet. No serious void-worshipper's collection is right without it. All songs by Orre/Tiljander. Mastered by Tomas Bodén. Cut by Noel Summerville. Pressed at Optimal. Housed in gatefold sleeve. Includes MP3/FLAC download code.

A unique synthesis of time-dilating folk-jazz romanticism, brittle chamber dub, and plasmic post-techno electronics, Tarquin Magnet is Australian musician Tarquin Manek's first full solo release on Blackest Ever Black, but by no means his first contribution to the label; as one-half of Tarcar (with Carla dal Forno), he has released the dysfunctional dreamsongs of Mince Glace (2014), and as one-third of F ingers (with dal Forno and Samuel Karmel) he has helped summon the baleful backyard apparitions of Hide Before Dinner (BLACKEST 044LP, 2015). Manek has been busy elsewhere, too; he released Th Duo under his LST alias on Another Dark Age in 2015 (ADA 003LP). Still, none of this activity prepares one for the disturbed and enchanted environments of Tarquin Magnet. Its raw materials are the result of improvisation and domestic field recording, of literally grabbing at whatever's available -- clarinet, keyboard, dictaphone, cell phone -- and throwing it into the pot. And then, of course, untold hours of hunched and red-eyed editing. For all its rough textures and strange juxtapositions, this is masterfully mixed and arranged music; to adepts, and really to anyone listening at high volume, its deep spatial dynamics and higher dub logic will be powerfully apparent. Comparisons are pointless, but one might imagine "Edges of Illusion"-era John Surman meeting Karel Goeyvaerts's minimalist phase, delivered with the no-fidelity recklessness of the best underground traditions of Australia and New Zealand. The spooling tunnel visions of "Fortunes Past" (like a scene from Jane Arden and Jack Bond's Anti-Clock (1979)) and strung-out junkyard gamelan of "Fortunes Begun" precede "Perfect Scorn," a tour de force of crack'd kosmische pitched somewhere between folk tale and science fiction. Imagine The Shadow Ring or Small Cruel Party trying to find common ground with Dettinger or Pole, or the sound of a million servers crashing and taking their users' memories with them. Manek's psycho-acoustic landscaping culminates in "Blackest Frypan," a puzzle-box of insinuating, paranormal resonances wrought out of plucked steel guitar strings, stifled screams, and subaqueous bleeps. This truly progressive, THC-ushered marriage of wracked bedroom psychedelia, gloopy alien concrète, and dubwise, third-eye-open sound-design is a fitting finale to a record of singular and persuasive vision. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy, London; pressed at Optimal; housed in reverse-board sleeve with printed inner sleeve and download code (MP3/FLAC).

The three original songs from Tropic of Cancer's two 10"s on Downwards, The Dull Age/Victims (2009) and Be Brave (2011) (now both out of print and highly sought-after), collected on one 12" with new artwork by Silent Editions. An artifact of a time and a place that can never be revisited or relived. The ultimate post-punk, post-techno death-disc. Written and produced by Camella Lobo and Juan Mendez. Recorded in Long Beach, CA, and Minneapolis, MN, 2008-2009. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy in London. 12" pressed at Optimal and housed in full picture sleeve printed on reverse board. Includes MP3/FLAC download code.

Stop Suffering is first music to emerge from Camella Lobo's Tropic of Cancer project since her 2013 debut album, Restless Idylls (BLACKEST 005CD/LP). The towering, time-stopping title-track is the culmination of Tropic of Cancer's work to date; rarely does an arrangement so sparse exhibit such grandeur. Written and recorded by Camella Lobo in LA. Additional recording, production, and mixing by Joshua Eustis (Sons of Magdalene, Telefon Tel Aviv). Cover photograph by Jasmine Deporta. Layout by Oliver Smith. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy in London; pressed at Optimal; housed in black paper inner sleeve and full-color reverse board LP sleeve. Includes MP3/FLAC download code.

Manbait is a survey of Regis's 2010-'15 productions and remixes for Blackest Ever Black. In addition to three originals (in several different versions) and his celebrated remixes of Raime, Vatican Shadow, Ike Yard, and Dalhous, it features three previously unreleased tracks: a Regis take on a lost song by his own teenage synth-punk group Family Sex, an alternate mix of Tropic of Cancer's "Plant Lilies at My Head," and an edit of his own "Blinding Horses." Regis -- real name Karl O'Connor -- requires little in the way of introduction. Founder of the Downwards label, lynchpin of the late Sandwell District collective, one half of British Murder Boys (with Surgeon), and instigator of numerous other projects (among them Ugandan Methods, Concrete Fence, Kalon, and Sandra Electronics), the eternally shape-shifting O'Connor is one of techno's last true visionaries. O'Connor's arrival on Blackest Ever Black in 2010 coincided with a radical recalibration, and heightening, of his production work, and the tracks collected on Manbait document nothing less than an artist at the peak of his powers. One can hear elements of Sandwell District's Berlin-incubated warehouse minimalism, the brutish dancefloor provocations of Regis's '90s Downwards material (what will always be known, against his wishes, as 'The Birmingham Sound'), the DIY drone-pop and darkwave of Sandra Electronics, the high-torque breakbeat experiments of British Murder Boys. Throughout the listener is treated to some of the most morbidly atmospheric sound design in all electronic music (the shadowplay of '80s goth and industrial made thrillingly contemporary), and to urgent, cyclical, ruthlessly avant-garde drum-programming informed by jungle, dubstep, and grime... but always unmistakably, irreducibly Regis. Manbait's key track actually predates O'Connor's association with Blackest Ever Black by several months: "C U 1," a nauseous, low-slung production credited to his alias Cub, and originally self-released, incognito, on an imprint of the same name in April 2010. With its coarsely broken-beat, disarmingly slow tempo, and deep pools of low-end pressure, it set the tone for O'Connor's productions in the ensuing half-decade. In 2015, five years after its release, it's still pretty much untouchable. All tracks mastered and cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy, London, except "Loss (Regis Version)," mastered by Veronica Vasicka, and "C U 1," mastered by CGB at Dubplates & Mastering. CD housed in full-color digipak. With exquisite cover art (Survivor, 1987) by none other than Val Denham, this is an anthology that no conscientious stableboy or girl can refuse. Life hurts!

Ossia (Young Echo member, operates Rewind Forward, Peng! Sound, No Corner, Hotline Recordings) debuts with "Red X," inspired by Peter Tosh's diary recordings in which he documented his dissatisfaction and mistrust in the run-up to his shocking murder in '87. The track brilliantly bridges dubwise, isolationist electronics and modern soundsystem dynamics. "Blood & Ice (Version)" was coaxed out of a dubplate of "Ice & Blood" and the crackly runout groove of Tosh's Bombo Klaat 7" shot through '70s Copicat tape-delay and an array of effects. Vinyl-only edition of 500 housed in beautiful screenprinted sleeve designed by Studio Tape-Echo.

First vinyl release of the definitive version of "Fooling Around," which appeared in truncated form on Rat Columns' 2014 album Leaf (R.I.P. Society). Its void-chasing motoric and moody jangle evoke Splendour of Fear-era Felt or David Kilgour at his dreamiest, strapped to the engine of NEU!'s "Für Immer." "Living in the New World" summons Orange Juice or The Modern Lovers, but with a darker, more delirious edge; "Should I Leave You Alone?" closes with square-jawed dub-bass and chewy tape FX yielding to baroquely beautiful guitar phrasing and limpid Moog tone-float. Picture sleeve; includes insert and download code. Edition of 500.

Very necessary standalone release of Six Six Seconds' "Tearing Down Heaven," standout track from the 2012 Downwards compilation So Click Heels. Written and performed in Berlin by the elusive Eden and deftly recorded and mixed by Karl O'Connor. Darkly rapturous dream-pop; the abyssal swoon of shoegaze meets a harsher, more pernicious order of psychedelic rock minimalism. This 10" features a slightly extended version of "Tearing Down Heaven" and a stunning "Reprise" that unravels the original's complex webs of feedback and high-end scorch into a masochistic drone-raga for eternally thwarted lovers. Remastered by Matt Colton. One-off vinyl edition of 500 copies.

Faith Coloccia and Alex Barnett return to Blackest Ever Black with their second duo album, Weld; working with synthesizers, effected vocals, raw electrical noise, field recordings, EVP techniques, tape manipulation, and drum machines to create a music at once lucid and mystic. Its songs embody various experiential philosophies and objectives: searching for the sacred in the forgotten and supposedly useless; exploring the meaning of "natural"; listening for the pulse of the ancient; using technology both to materialize memory and to dream a folklore for a future age. Coloccia and Barnett's ambition is apparent early on in the stately, medievalist keyboard/choral poetics of "Truth Teller," moving through the agitated wormhole techno of "Dreamsnake," to the white light-emitting, near-symphonic plainchant of "Healer." The zero-hour synth pulsations of "Blight" are first interrupted, then engulfed, by an extra-terrestrial broadcast of piercing bell and glass-tones; "AM Horizon" is pitched bewitchingly between Prophet-5 pulp futurism and earthbound, atavistic dread; the baroque harmonic sequence of "Agate Cross" disintegrates at its very climax, cooling and dissipating into a deep star-field of pure tone. "Ash Grove" and "Rose Eye" are exhilarating exercises in contemporary musique concrète; complex timbral constructs in which Coloccia's disembodied glossolalia, swooping strings, and other nameless sonic spectra conspire to evoke extra-dimensional space and the highest spiritual drama. Weld speaks its own distinctive dream-language, but it comes highly recommend to anyone enamored of the brittle sci-fi synth-scapes in Caroline K's Now Wait for Last Year, the amorphous electronics of Beatriz Ferreyra's work, Conrad Schnitzler's more gothic moments, and even the gravest metaphysical reckonings of a Stockhausen or a Rózmann.